The trouble is that nominating Ryan brings its own set of difficulties. The first and most obvious is that a contested convention where party leaders install their own candidate against the will of their voters will validate everything those voters have come to believe about the establishment: that it’s out of touch, that it doesn’t know how to win, that it doesn’t care about what they think, and that it views them with nothing but contempt. According to a new McClatchy poll, 65 percent of Republicans say that if Trump doesn’t get the nomination, it should go to someone who ran for president this year. Other polls in recent weeks have found similar numbers when they asked variations on this question: However you put it, at least six in ten Republican voters seem opposed to the white knight scenario. Which means that come fall, significant numbers of those Trump and Cruz voters might choose to stay home.

It wouldn’t just be the manner in which Ryan got the nomination that would infuriate anti-establishment Republicans. It would also be the fact that as much as anyone, he represents the elite GOP consensus on economic issues.

Joe Scudder is the "nom de plume" (or "nom de guerre") of a fifty-ish-year-old writer and stroke survivor. He lives in St Louis with his wife and still-at-home children. He has been a freelance writer and occasional political activist since the early nineties. He describes his politics as Tolkienesque.